Collect metrics and traces with OpenTelemetry

You can collect metrics and traces from your applications or services using the CloudWatch agent with the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP), which is a popular open source solution. You can use any OpenTelemetry SDK to send metrics and traces to the CloudWatch agent. For more information about the available OpenTelemetry SDKs, see OpenTelemetry Supported Language APIs & SDKs..

To collect OpenTelemetry metrics and traces, add an otlp section to the CloudWatch agent configuration file. The section has the following fields:

• grpc_endpoint – Optional. Specifies the address for the CloudWatch agent to use to listen for OpenTelemetry metrics or traces sent using gRPC Remote Procedure Calls. The format is ip:port. This address must match the address set for the gRPC exporter in the OpenTelemetry SDK. If you omit this field, the default of 127.0.0.1:4317 is used.

• http_endpoint – Optional. Specifies the address for the CloudWatch agent to use to listen for OpenTelemetry metrics or traces sent over HTTP. The format is ip:port. This address must match the address set for the HTTP exporter in the OpenTelemetry SDK. If you omit this field, the default of 127.0.0.1:4318 is used.

• tls – Optional. Specifies that the server should be configured with TLS.

  • cert_file – Path to the TLS certificate to use for TLS required connections.

  • key_file – Path to the TLS key to use for TLS required connections.

The otlp section can be placed in multiple sections within the CloudWatch agent configuration file depending on how and where you want to send the metrics and traces. Each otlp section requires a unique endpoint. For detailed information about splitting the metrics and traces endpoints, see OTLP Exporter Configuration in the OpenTelemetry SDK documentation.

To send metrics to CloudWatch or Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, add the otlp section under metrics_collected within the metrics section. For more information about sending metrics to different destinations, see Manually create or edit the CloudWatch agent configuration file. The following example shows a configuration that sends metrics to CloudWatch:

{
  "metrics": {
    "metrics_collected": {
      "otlp": {
        "grpc_endpoint": "127.0.0.1:4317",
        "http_endpoint": "127.0.0.1:4318"
      }
    }
  }
}
        

To send metrics to Amazon CloudWatch Logs using the Embedded metric format (EMF), add the otlp section under metrics_collected within the logs section. This sends the EMF logs by default to the /aws/cwagent log group and a generated log stream. The metrics are extracted into the CWAgent namespace by default. The following example shows a configuration that sends metrics as EMF logs to CloudWatch Logs:

{
  "logs": {
    "metrics_collected": {
      "otlp": {
        "grpc_endpoint": "127.0.0.1:4317",
        "http_endpoint": "127.0.0.1:4318"
      }
    }
  }
}
        

To send traces to AWS X-Ray, add the otlp section under traces_collected within the traces section. The following example shows a configuration that sends traces to X-Ray:

{
  "traces": {
    "traces_collected": {
      "otlp": {
        "grpc_endpoint": "127.0.0.1:4317",
        "http_endpoint": "127.0.0.1:4318"
      }
    }
  }
}